Mini Movie Reviews 2 - The Reviewening

[El_Machinae]

*visibly jealous of the ability to have a spoilered conversation on Prometheus*

[Wyrmwood]

I assumed that the engineer at the beginning of the film is, essentially, the namesake character: Prometheus. All life on earth began as bacteria, no? The engineer gave his bled out into the water, perhaps providing the catalyst for our gradual evolution from little more than germs? Going with the theme, perhaps his actions were unsanctioned - controlled or not, he metaphorically stole fire from the gods and allowed it to spread, culminating in the human race. Assuming the the engineers have some sort of god-ethic, perhaps the actions of 'Prometheus' were deemed dangerous, irresponsible, sacrilegious and/or vain - the 'Aliens' were a product in response to this, essentially wiping out the species and erasing the abominable actions of 'Prometheus'.

Ironically, evolving through cannibalising the DNA of whichever species they inhabit could have been an unforseen consequence, or perhaps one they were all too aware of? Until the biomechanoid warfare took on a life on it's own, ala the human 'experiment'. In essence, this makes the evolution of the 'Aliens' so intertwined with the origins of our own species that we may as well be siblings, after a fashion.

Just my thoughts after seeing it on friday.

[Kiro]

I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree here.

Fair dues, but in my defence I'll say

the pseudo-xeno displays none of the classic morphology of the various xenos breeds; back vents, phallic head, inner jaw, 6 fingers and, IIRC a tail. As you say though, each to their own.

[Arnizipal]

Fair dues, but in my defence I'll say

the pseudo-xeno displays none of the classic morphology of the various xenos breeds; back vents, phallic head, inner jaw, 6 fingers and, IIRC a tail. As you say though, each to their own.

It had an inner jaw and a vaguely phallic head (although pointier than the "original" alien).
It seemingly didn't have the tongue-mouth though, and it had pointed teeth instead of human teeth.
The "dog alien" in Alien 3 also didn't have the back vents, which again seems to indicate a lot of the morphology is host-specific.

[Avian]

Prometheus [3D] (2012)
Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender (the Kristoffer Joner of foreign films), Idris Elba and Charlize Theron.
It's a prequel to Alien, which it ought not to be as it would completely ruin the older movie if you saw this one first. Otherwise a good movie and very nice visually (one of the main reasons I like Scott is that he is one of the best at creating visual films).
Also, I agree with Arnizipal.

Verdict: Watch
(four out of five)


It puzzled me that...

... they decided to go with Guy Pierce in bad makeup instead of an actually old actor.

And it annoys me that...

... Guillermo del Toro might be right in predicting that this movie ensured that his 'At the Mountains of Madness' movie will never happen, because the premise is so similar. Bah.

It had an inner jaw and a vaguely phallic head (although pointier than the "original" alien).
It seemingly didn't have the tongue-mouth though, and it had pointed teeth instead of human teeth.

Well, the Alien movie happened on a different planet, so it's unlikely that the specific creatures are directly related.

[Kiro]

...It had an inner jaw...

By "inner jaw" I was talking about the 'mouth-tongue' you mentioned. IIRC, it's been described as "inner jaw" in some of the comics/books etc.

... they decided to go with Guy Pierce in bad makeup instead of an actually old actor.

I don't understand why this confuses people: I see it as contract negotiation...

[Burnthem]

Seen Prometheus - a mess. plot holes galore, poor characters and plotting, and if you've seen the trailers you've already seen 90% of the film. Very disappointed.

As others have mentioned, why did Holloway pretty much commit suicide? He had no idea what was wrong with him, he could have had flu for all he knew, and the motivation for David infecting him was never made clear. If it was a test then David was pretty damn poor at keeping an eye on his subject and investigating the results. Also, Vickers demise was so daft I almost shouted at the cinema screen. She goes through all the shenanigans on escaping the Prometheus in a pod only to get crush by a rolling ship because she's too stupid to run at 90 degrees to it? Come on, that's just stupid.

Also, no motivation nor explanation was given for Fifield coming back to the ship after whatever the hell it was that happened happened to him. I realise films shouldn't spell everything out for you but this left just too many blanks. The starting sequence was never explained and only made sense if you'd read what it was about on the internet, the procedures the exploration crew followed were unrealistic in the extreme, they landed and almost immediately jumped out and rode off to explore, very little in the way of preliminary investigation etc. They've just spent a trillion dollars and years getting there and they can't wait a few hours and be a little cautious?

Also, who was driving the lead vehicle in the convoy when the storm was approaching? If the storm was so dangerous why was Prometheus not damaged nor Shaws/Davids/Holloways suits show any sign of damage at all?!

I strongly suspect the end sequence with the xenomorph-like thing was purely put in to appease Alien fans and i think it was totally unneeded. the presence of Weyland on Prometheus was also not used to its full extent, having such a major plot development just lead to him getting cuffed on the head by an Engineer 10 minutes later and that's it was such a wasted opportunity. Plus Vickers being his daughter could be seen coming a mile off.

The whole thing stinks of AVP to me, alot of plot similarities (Influence of other species on Earth, alien Pyramids, a dying benefactor financing and accompanying the expedition), alot of cheap, poor actors used as extras we are supposed to care about with little to no character development. Instant changes in character motivations and no explanations as to why, If i had been told Paul WS Anderson had directed this I would believe you. Clangers in the script such as Fifields 'I don't care about you, I'm just here for the money' were cringeworthy, almost as bad as the bit in AVP where the scots guy in the helicopter gets out a picture of his kids, pretty much saying to the audience 'please like me through this obvious and lame attempt at character background because we all know I'm gonna die later'.

Prometheus had a whole damn planet to choose where to land, and they conveniently come down within visual range of what they were looking for? Gimme a break.

The engineer gets woken up (Why was it in stasis anyway?! How did that help it avoid the never-explained catastrophe that befell the others?) and decides to continue with the millenia old mission to destroy life on Earth. If it was that important a mission why was it not done by somebody else? Was it indeed going to destroy Earth? Shaw just makes that assumption with little to no evidence to hand.

The aforementioned unnamed crisis that killed off all of the Space Jockeys/Engineers must have been pretty major for there to be multiple ships present on the planet and all of them left alone for so long. If humans could land and explore relatively safely for a length of time why did the Engineers not come in an tidy up themselves?

The Engineers ship is controlled by boiled eggs and a flute. Hilarious.

The 'adult' version of Shaw's 'baby' is just left unattended to grow. Seriously, it's just ignored totally. It also looks like a bad Men In Black reject, classic Giger this aint.

Two scientists are left alone in the 'Temple/Pyramid' after presumably getting lost (this isn't explained and is made all the more laughable being that Fifield was the guy responsible for mapping the place!) and after encountering myriad dead bodies and spooky goings on they come across a strange alien snake. So they touch it. Yeah, that makes sense.

Also, not so much a plot problem but an intriguing question - What exactly did David say to the Engineer? Did he intentionally make it angry in order to fulfill a secret motive of his? Did he want his 'parents dead'? Hmmm...

I am also EXTREMELY miffed at the sheer amount of the film, including major plot points, shown in the trailers. Hardly any of that film held any surprise for me whatsoever, from Shaw 'giving birth', to the appearance of the Engineers, to the Prometheus being destroyed and the Engineer ship crashing. Poor show.

Compared to Alien this is a joke.

/Rant.

Watch - but don't get your hopes up.

[Arnizipal]

Didn't notice any (major) plot holes to be honest...

[Avian]

What about the whole

"put your DNA into the priordial sea and a billion years later creatures that are genetically identical to you turn up"

thing?

[Burnthem]

What about the whole

"put your DNA into the priordial sea and a billion years later creatures that are genetically identical to you turn up"

thing?

That was never explained in the film at all, if you hadn't read that elsewhere you'd have been left scratching your head as to not only what was going on, but also where.

EDIT - After that rant I suppose I'd better list the things I did like -

The 'David alone' sequence at the start was well done, and the shots of Serenity Prometheus in space were also very cool. The suits had a Dead Space vibe to them that I liked, even if the material looked a little flimsy. Not quite decided on the appearance of the Engineers yet, not sure if it's very good or very bad, time will tell, big blue muscley humans just look like Watchmen rejects, but also strangely alien, hmmm.

The Engineers are obviously masters of terraforming and biological engineering, and the 'black goo' in the Engineers facility certainly looks like the main 'weapon' for them, with the ability to mutate whatever it comes into contact with gives alot of curious theories and 'family trees' leading to the Alien we all know and love. Maybe the Space Jockey on LV426 was carrying this goo and got infected himself? Who knows, but it's leading to alot of discussion on teh intrawebz.

I'm very happy to see a big budget science fiction/science horror film in the cinema again, even if it's far from perfect.

[Avian]

That was never explained in the film at all, if you hadn't read that elsewhere you'd have been left scratching your head as to not only what was going on, but also where.

What are you talking about? Not only was that explained in the film, that WAS the film. You don't need to be a rocket wizard to figure that out on your own.
(Besides, I recognize Iceland when I see it. )

As I see it,

the black goo is what breaks down the body and lets the DNA recombine with other things, creating hybrids. Then there needed to be something else in there too, which was the protoform of their xenomorph bioweapon. On LV223, it combined with the worm things we saw on the ground and made the tentacle icky and on LV426 it combined with something else, which was what killed the Maker on the ship there.

[Burnthem]

Try to imagine you are a cinema-goer that doesn't know alot about Aliens/Space jockeys and hasn't read about Prometheus online or discussed it with knowledgable people. To the layman it was not explained very well at all. Although to be honest this was the least of the films problems.

I do agree with your black goo thoughts though, totally.


(I've gone back and added stuff to my original post, keep remembering stuff.)

[RanaldLoec]

I love it when a film doesn't live up to a fanatics idea for a cult film like Alien or Starwars.

When I watch a film I take 3 thing with me

1) This is another persons ideas on film and may differ to the orginal, book, comic, film, story.

2) To view any sci-fi, fantasy film will be require the suspension of disbelief some what.

3) Not to go with any pre conceived ideas of what the film should be as this can only lead to disappointments.

It's like when me and my friends went to see "The Phantom Menace" my friend spent ages raging about how Lucas had raped the whole star wars saga.

I was like "dude its his story and he envisaged it, created it, directed and filmed it he will do what he believes is right and who are we to say he's taking his story in the wrong direction.".

I thoroughly enjoyed Prometheus go with an open mind and enjoy.

[Kiro]

Wow, rant indeed. It seems a lot of the things that puzzled me got you as well, but while they merely left me confused, they seem to have inspired a Hulk-like rage in you! XD

Also, no motivation nor explanation was given for Fifield coming back to the ship after whatever the hell it was that happened happened to him.

The more I think about it, Fifield must have been using some higher brain functions as he uses an axe on his rampage, which I guess puts him above 'mindless zombie'.

The whole thing stinks of AVP to me, alot of plot similarities (Influence of other species on Earth, alien Pyramids, a dying benefactor financing and accompanying the expedition), alot of cheap, poor actors used as extras we are supposed to care about with little to no character development.

Funnily enough, I think you can chalk that up to disregard for the AvP's ala Predators - all the references and rehashed lines were tedious for anyone whose seen AvP 1 & 2, but as Predators decided to ignore them (and Predator 2), it could conveniently rifle through their pockets for ideas.

Was it indeed going to destroy Earth? Shaw just makes that assumption with little to no evidence to hand.

While not exactly waterproof logic, the crew were working off two important facts: the ship's plotted course was Earth, and it's cargo hold was full of biological weapons.

It also looks like a bad Men In Black reject, classic Giger this ain't

To be fair, I can imagine the fanboy rage if anything else Gigeresque popped up.

Also, not so much a plot problem but an intriguing question - What exactly did David say to the Engineer? Did he intentionally make it angry in order to fulfill a secret motive of his? Did he want his 'parents dead'? Hmmm...

I see no reason not to take the scene at face value; there's no way David could have predicted how the engineer would react. The look of surprise on his face as his head gets ripped off kinda backs that up. Plus, I'd imagine David would have some behaviour commands built in, preventing him from acting against Weyland, though not from wishing he could, it seems...unless his line of speech was just an allusion to Vickers motives

[Terminatorphoenix]

I see no reason not to take the scene at face value; there's no way David could have predicted how the engineer would react. The look of surprise on his face as his head gets ripped off kinda backs that up. Plus, I'd imagine David would have some behaviour commands built in, preventing him from acting against Weyland, though not from wishing he could, it seems...unless his line of speech was just an allusion to Vickers motives

It's possible that the language may have changed somewhat since the elements left on Earth, word connotations change all the time and that is of course assuming that the connotations at the time that the original elements were written were roughly analogous. For example, 'hello' evolved from the earlier 'hullo' which was a simple exclamation of surprise. It only became hello because Thomas Edison liked to use it as a greeting. For the engineers 'We come in Peace' might mean something entirely different (if that is indeed what David said).

Moving away from the linguistics for a moment you've got to think of the Engineer's intention when it created humanity. We might have been a bio-weapon just like the Xenomorph, or maybe the other Engineer's just viewed our creation as a great sin and the Engineer thought it was it's duty to exterminate us using our 'cousin' organism

[Arnizipal]

As others have mentioned, why did Holloway pretty much commit suicide? He had no idea what was wrong with him, he could have had flu for all he knew, and the motivation for David infecting him was never made clear.

He could have been in horrible pain, and he was obviously mutating into something.
He also knew some sort of parasite was eating at him, as he had seen the worm in his eye in the mirror.

Also, Vickers demise was so daft I almost shouted at the cinema screen. She goes through all the shenanigans on escaping the Prometheus in a pod only to get crush by a rolling ship because she's too stupid to run at 90 degrees to it? Come on, that's just stupid.

Not saying that was a great scene, but the Engineer's ship was massive. Even running at an angle wouldn't have gotten her out of the way.

Also, who was driving the lead vehicle in the convoy when the storm was approaching? If the storm was so dangerous why was Prometheus not damaged nor Shaws/Davids/Holloways suits show any sign of damage at all?!

The weather report was an estimate, based on a scan.
It's an alien environment. How its weather works is anyone's guess (yes I know this sounds like a cop-out).

I strongly suspect the end sequence with the xenomorph-like thing was purely put in to appease Alien fans and i think it was totally unneeded.

I didn't mind the alien at the end at all (nor the giant face hugger for that matter).
In my opinion there weren't enough creature fights in the movie.

The engineer gets woken up (Why was it in stasis anyway?! How did that help it avoid the never-explained catastrophe that befell the others?) and decides to continue with the millenia old mission to destroy life on Earth. If it was that important a mission why was it not done by somebody else? Was it indeed going to destroy Earth? Shaw just makes that assumption with little to no evidence to hand.

For all the Engineer knew an hour may have passed since it was put in stasis.
As for why nobody else was sent to earth... well, there's room for a sequel to explain that now

The Engineers ship is controlled by boiled eggs and a flute. Hilarious.

I thought that was rather original actually...

The 'adult' version of Shaw's 'baby' is just left unattended to grow. Seriously, it's just ignored totally.

It was "decontaminated" and Shaw considered it killed.
She didn't tell anyone, presumably because she expected everyone to be against her at that point.
Since the second expedition leaves very soon after that it's not unthinkable Vickers doesn't go check on her medical bay.

What I didn't understand is why Shaw had to anesthetise herself three times during the surgery, all the while not being restrained in any way.
You'd think an advanced automated surgical robot would do that beforehand, and not just start cutting people up
In fact when you hear the med-bay say "applying anesthetic" all it does is spray disinfectant on Shaw's belly.

Two scientists are left alone in the 'Temple/Pyramid' after presumably getting lost (this isn't explained and is made all the more laughable being that Fifield was the guy responsible for mapping the place!) and after encountering myriad dead bodies and spooky goings on they come across a strange alien snake. So they touch it. Yeah, that makes sense.

Agreed. That didn't make sense.
It was also not entirely clear to me why they didn't just stay in one place so they'd be easy to find.
There was a map showing there exact location in the complex on the bridge of the ship.

[Burnthem]

Not saying that was a great scene, but the Engineer's ship was massive. Even running at an angle wouldn't have gotten her out of the way.

Shaw managed to avoid it by rolling on the ground. (rolleyes at the film, not you! )

It was "decontaminated" and Shaw considered it killed.
She didn't tell anyone, presumably because she expected everyone to be against her at that point.
Since the second expedition leaves very soon after that it's not unthinkable Vickers doesn't go check on her medical bay.

What I didn't understand is why Shaw had to anesthetise herself three times during the surgery, all the while not being restrained in any way.
You'd think an advanced automated surgical robot would do that beforehand, and not just start cutting people up
In fact when you hear the med-bay say "applying anesthetic" all it does is spray disinfectant on Shaw's belly.

Did you also notice that the crew came to take Shaw into surgery, she then fights them off and runs away, only to take herself to surgery. Neither of the crew she fights off attempt to follow her or raise any sort of alarm whatsoever, they just stop existing. The more I stop and analyse each scene the more this film comes across as poorly written and scripted. I have the suspicion that entire scene was simply to provide schlock value and to have a chestburster analogy. Also - Staples?! An incredibly advanced medical table like that and it sews you up with the kind of staples I see on a construction site. Oh, and this has just occurred to me too, the surgery table was not set up for female patients. Yet it was located in Vickers 'lifeboat', presumably for her own personal use! Yet more .

[Avian]

Try to imagine you are a cinema-goer that doesn't know alot about Aliens/Space jockeys and hasn't read about Prometheus online or discussed it with knowledgable people. To the layman it was not explained very well at all. Although to be honest this was the least of the films problems.

We have the opening scene, where the guy dissolves and his DNA strands are doing funky things. Then later people are talking about going out to meet our makers. Then we meet the makers and it's the same aliens as in the beginning of the movie. That ought to have made it clear that the beginning was on Earth quite some time ago.

I also noticed that...

the spaceship on the start was not the same type as the ones later in the film and in Alien(s). Thus presumably it could be belonging to some other faction or group within the Maker society who visit Earth periodically (for a period of a billion years or so, unless they have time travel) to teach the humies. Meanwhile the other Makers ones we see later are military and they have their own agenda. The base on LV223 is where they make the bioweapons and the derelict on LV426 had been carrying modified weapons when there was an accident and it crashed. Maybe the one that wakes from stasis gets worried about what humans can do nowadays and decides to go to Earth and make sure they are not a threat.

Also...

why the heck didn't the captain or Vickers check to see if Miliburn & Fifield had made any transmissions while they were getting it on?

[Burnthem]

Good idea about the Makers/Engineer factions, could make things interesting.

[Kiro]

Did you also notice that the crew came to take Shaw into surgery, she then fights them off and runs away, only to take herself to surgery. Neither of the crew she fights off attempt to follow her or raise any sort of alarm whatsoever, they just stop existing.

Pretty sure one of them is Ford, whom we see again, and Corporation security guard with energy shotgun that we later see again.

Oh, and this has just occurred to me too, the surgery table was not set up for female patients. Yet it was located in Vickers 'lifeboat', presumably for her own personal use! Yet more .

Did you ever think maybe it was there for Weyland, and not Vickers?...